10 minute read
• Russian and Ukrainian Israelis unite
from 1252
by Jewish News
By Jeremy Last in Tel Aviv
Dozens of Ukrainians and Russians put on a display of unity in Tel Aviv on Tuesday as they prepared packages for families in Ukraine.
Jewish News spoke to volunteers at the city’s Ukrainian Cultural Centre as they worked into the night, in an emotionally-charged atmosphere, packing boxes of toiletries, clothes and medicine donated by local Israelis.
The boxes were being loaded on to a lorry headed for a warehouse in central Israel where they were to be sent directly to Ukraine by air.
Valeria Ivashkina, a 31-year-old journalist who moved to Israel from Odessa, Ukraine, 10 months ago and lives in Ramat Gan with her husband, had been at the cultural centre for most of the day.
“It’s hard to not cry, because my relatives – my parents, my sister and my grandparents – are in Ukraine,” she said, as she took a break from fi lling boxes with sanitary products and clothes. “This is my country. When I see what the Russian army is doing with our cities, I feel like I was hit in the solar plexus and I can’t breathe.
“My stepfather is fi ghting in the military and my mother is a dentist who has volunteered since 2014. I’m helping from Israel: fi nding contacts and speakers from Ukraine for international journalists, co-ordinating translators, gathering humanitarian aid, but I feel that it’s not enough. I should be there.”
Expressing a sentiment echoed among the group of volunteers, Ivashkina said she has nothing against regular Russians.
“I can tell the di erence between Russians who support Putin and those who are against him. I am not against Russian culture or language. I am okay with it, but I am not okay with aggression and with chauvinism.,” she said. “We will fi ght for peace.
“I have Russian friends in Israel and in Russia. They feel ashamed because they don’t want the war.”
Ivana Mereulova, 32, from Magadan in north-eastern Russia, said she felt obliged to take a stance against the invasion of Ukraine.
Holding a sign stating, “I am ashamed to be Russian,” she said: “I wanted to support Ukrainians because I love them so much. I have friends there who don’t want to leave the country because they want to volunteer. And their brothers are at war – it’s just awful.
“Right now I feel like I want to die because my friends are at war. It’s an awful feeling. I am shaking all the time. I can’t sleep – I’ve slept two and a half hours each night since this started.
“I am ashamed that the Russian army are killing my friends in our brother country.”
Another Russian, Tanya Reznikov, 45, from Moscow, has lived in Israel for 22 years. “I feel terrible about what’s going on now,” she said. “It is painful for me to know that two countries that I think are brothers are at war now.
“I am here to help the people. It doesn’t matter who is here; Ukrainian, Russian, it doesn’t matter. Israel is my country now and I think it is terrible, horrible what is going on.”
The volunteers, young and old, come from all parts of Ukraine and Russia.
When Refael Kruskal said last week that he was preparing for looting and anarchy on the streets, it sounded almost implausible, writes Michael Daventry.
His bleak assessment, which Jewish News reported on its front page last week, came before war had broken out.
But just hours after he spoke to this newspaper, Kruskal found himself leading 400 children and young people – all connected to the Tikva children’s home he leads in Odessa – on a convoy of buses out of town to escape the fi ghting.
On Wednesday, Kruskal was in the Carpathian Mountains of western Ukraine, where the convoy made camp after their bus drivers demanded a vastly infl ated sum to continue their journey.
“We stopped at a petrol station where we had Kiddush and it was very, very overwhelming. People [were] crying,” he said. “It reminds us of evacuations and times gone by, times which we would never have to repeat.”
This week, vast swathes of Ukraine simply fl ed. Nearly 900,000 people have left the country and a similar number are internally displaced, the UN’s refugee agency estimates. Many of those who stayed behind did so because they have no choice.
“Our main target audience are elderly, Jewish elderly, mostly lonely elderly, and elderly with disabilities, chronic illnesses,” said Volodymyr Vysotskyi, who runs a programme to help them in and around Kyiv.
He described a grim situation in Boyarka, south-west of Kyiv, where there has been street warfare and blocked roads. Many towns are physically isolated after bridges were blown up by Ukrainian forces to halt the Russian advance.
Vysotskyi, whose programme is supported by World Jewish Relief (WJR), says help is being crippled by logistical problems. “For some people in Boyarka who are, for example, diabetic, they are looking for medicine, insulin. Every person who has any sort of health problem is under huge risk because the supply chains have been broken and the pharmacies were open until two days ago.”
Jewish charities around the world have launched fundraising
Russian Ivana Mereulova and, inset, Ukrainian Michelle Levina at Tel Aviv’s Ukrainian Cultural Centre
Zelensky’s faith is ‘irrelevant’
Russia’s ambassador to the UN has said the Ukrainian president’s Jewish heritage is irrelevant because his government is under the control of “radicals and neo-Nazis” who defy him. Vasily Nebenzya made the remark on Monday, when asked how Ukraine could be controlled by Nazis when Volodymyr Zelensky is a Jew. Russia has repeatedly said, without offering evidence, that its invasion was needed in order to “de-Nazify” Ukraine.
£7.5m for Jews of Ukraine
An emergency fund has been created to help Ukrainian Jews affected by Russia’s invasion. Genesis Philanthropy Group (GPG), co-founded by Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan, has allocated $10 million (£7.45m) to assist Jewish communities caught in the confl ict. GPG, which supports Russian-speaking Jewish communities across the world, will use the funds to distribute emergency supplies, evacuation efforts, homes for the elderly, and other communal necessities, for those unable or unwilling to leave the country.
Ukrainian Dariia Nor and Russian Svetlana Singer
Michelle Levina, 19, from Dnipro, Ukraine, has lived in Israel for a year. Like many at the centre, her family remains in Ukraine.
She said: “Of course we are all feeling very shaken up. My heritage and tradition are from Ukraine. I was born and raised there. We feel very sad but at the same time angry at the Russian government for invading our country and starting a war. We were at peace, we were fi ne.”
Levina had harsh words for Vladimir Putin. “He is sick and mad and I think he should su er for everything he is doing and all the lives that he is taking right now.”
Underlining the positive atmosphere at the Tel Aviv venue, she added: “We work with anyone who supports Ukraine and we are all united. Because the only way to win this thing is to stand united against the evil.
“My family are saying it’s scary. They are saying they need to spend their evenings in bunkers. They are crying but they are all united. We all have hope. We believe in our army. I love Ukraine and I hope this all ends soon.”
Svetlana Singer, 31, was born in Magadan in Russia, lived in Kyiv for 15 years and moved to Israel fi ve years ago. Her mother lives in Kyiv.
“I don’t think it is a confl ict between Russia and Ukraine anymore. I think it has to do with every citizen of every country in the world,” she said. “It’s normal, peaceful citizens against evil. You cannot just sit quietly, because tomorrow it will be at your door and you will feel it.
“Putin is killing innocent people. The building 100 metres from my mum’s building was bombed. My sister with two tiny children, my nephews, who I couldn’t see because of Covid, I am not sure I will see them.”
Singer said her family has been divided by the confl ict. “My father, uncle and aunt are in Moscow and my father has been calling my sister and claiming there is not a single Russian soldier in Ukraine.
“This is insane. Families are being broken down because of some ambition of a psycho, tyrant. I don’t feel Russian. I think every Russian who has pride should be ashamed and stand up against war, against murder.”
‘Nobody ever dreamed carnage would be like this’
A senior Ukrainian rabbi fought back tears when he was asked in a live interview about his feelings when he saw footage of Jews praying in underground bunkers, writes Michael Daventry.
Rabbi Yaakov Bleich said it was di cult to watch the pictures after his 32 years helping to rebuild Ukraine’s Jewish community following decades of suppression under communism.
He told BBC Radio 5 Live on Tuesday: “This has been defi nitely the most harrowing, harrowing experience and I feel like I’m there with them, even though I’m not but I’ve just been with them since the beginning.
“And I just hope that the thing ends.”
Footage of a group of Jews being led in prayer in a long corridor went viral over the weekend after it appeared on social media.
Bleich, who is one of Ukraine’s chief rabbis, spoke of his anguish “to see everything that you built over so many years – and I’m not only talking for myself as the chief rabbi, I’m talking for every single rabbi in that country – to see your community being disintegrated and bombed in front of you.
“I’m telling you, many of the rabbis who swore they’d never leave – they’re running because nobody ever dreamt that the carnage and the bombing would look the way that it’s looking. Nobody.
“People that are praying in those bunkers. I’ve been begging them to leave. Just evacuate and get out.” He added he himself had been forced to leave Kyiv in recent days for “my own security”.
“I had to leave right when the war was starting. I couldn’t stay there for many reasons, one of the reasons is that I’m not particularly one of Putin’s favourites and I was on one of his lists.
“However, I have not stopped, I haven’t slept since this began.”
People shelter in a bunker for safety
JN video report at jewishnews.co.uk
The devastation in Freedom Square, Kharkiv after an attack by a Russian war missile
campaigns, part of a monumental e ort to help people inside the country and on its borders. WJR alone has raised more than £1 million.
Israel’s Jewish Agency has fi elded more telephone calls from Ukrainians asking about opportunities to make aliyah in the past week than in all of 2021.
The organisation says it making $1.5 million (£1.1m) in small grants available to Jewish organisations in Ukraine to help them bolster their security.
But accessing hard cash remains di cult in a country in which most banks are now closed: Kruskal recounted how he tried to use digital wire transfers between European banks to persuade bus drivers to take out their convoy.
World Jewry was already shocked by Russian president Vladimir Putin’s wild claim that he was deploying troops to rid Ukraine of Nazis in its leadership. A further defi ning moment in came on Tuesday, when a Russian rocket struck the complex that hosts Kyiv’s Holocaust memorial, Babyn Yar, killing at leave fi ve people.
But Vysotskyi said the threshold for Jewish outrage had been crossed a long time ago. “I want to assure you that it’s not the biggest thing. The last drop was much, much earlier.
“Jews don’t need to wait until they hit Babyn Yar. Even with the hits of hospitals, their homes, kindergartens, it’s enough to be just appalled and to understand everything you need to understand about our eastern neighbour.”
The real challenge, he said, would come once the fi ghting ended, regardless of who prevails, and another seemingly insurmountable task begins: rebuilding.
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